Climate Action Looks First To Go Under New Administration

EJ TransitionWatch: Climate Action Looks First To Go Under New Administration

By Joseph A. Davis

The essence of Trump 2.0 climate policy will be “drill, baby, drill.” But in the end, it will make only so much difference.

For example, President-elect Trump intends to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate treaty — for the second time. That makes the nation the only one of 196 nations that adopted the treaty to do so.

That said, the disappointing results of the latest COP29 negotiating session in Baku, Azerbaijan, suggest that few nations are attacking climate change aggressively enough to slow the warming anyway.

That’s the bad news.

 

The good news is that the iron laws

of economics have more power than

national leaders. The ‘energy transition’

to cleaner power will continue anyway.

 

The good news is that the iron laws of economics have more power than national leaders. The “energy transition” to cleaner power will continue anyway.

Still more good news is that, in the United States at least, many states and companies will go ahead with climate action.

Still, it’s a gloomy outlook, write Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman (may require subscription) in The New York Times. They sum it up this way: “The fight against climate change has taken a body blow with the election of Donald J. Trump, who calls global warming a ‘scam’ and has promised to erase federal efforts to reduce the pollution that is heating the planet.”

 

Fossil fuels continue to fuel rising emissions

Fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — are still the biggest contributors to warming of the planet. Burning them releases carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas.

And despite nearly 30 years of international efforts, human emissions of CO2 are still growing. Which is why atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are still rising.

That’s so, at least partly, because world energy demand is growing even faster than green power sources.

Amid that reality, Trump made headlines during the 2024 campaign when he invited a cadre of oil and gas tycoons to dine at Mar-a-Lago. He told them that if they raised $1 billion for his campaign, it would be a good “deal” because he would immediately reverse the Biden administration rules, policies and taxes that cost them money.

The two biggest sources of CO2 emissions are vehicles (oil-fueled) and power plants (gas- and coal-fueled).

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Biden, like the Obama EPA before it, issued a suite of rules to strictly limit emissions from fossil fuel power plants — to the point where renewables made more economic sense for new plants. They also tightened vehicle emission standards to a point where electric car purchases could be a better buy.

Trump can be expected to reverse both of those rules.

 

Cabinet picks signal climate apathy

The cabinet picks Trump has announced during the transition have cast much light on policies to expect when and if the next Senate confirms them. Few of them (may require subscription) can be expected to push climate action.

Here’s the lineup:

• Lee Zeldin, EPA: Although Zeldin projected a moderate image as a New York congressman, he is expected to go along with Trump’s anti-climate agenda. Zeldin has campaigned against a ban on fracking.
• Doug Burgum, Interior Department: The North Dakota governor headed the nation’s third-biggest oil and gas-producing state. He has close oil industry ties. As interior secretary, Burgum would have say-so over drilling on public lands and offshore waters.
• Chris Wright, Energy Department: Wright is CEO of the Denver fracking company Liberty Energy. As energy secretary, he would administer billions in grants to both fossil and green energy projects. “There is no climate crisis,” Wright has said (may require subscription).
• Sean Duffy, Transportation Department: Duffy is a Fox News host who served five terms as a GOP House member from New York. He has a 2% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters and has promoted “alternative science” blaming the sun for global heating rather than human activity.
• Scott Bessent, Treasury Department: As treasury secretary, the hedge fund manager would have major influence over green tax incentives like those in the Inflation Reduction Act. He has called for more oil production, deregulation and “energy dominance.”
• Brooke Rollins, Agriculture Department: A Trump loyalist, Rollins served in several White House roles during the president-elect’s first stint. The USDA runs several conservation programs that affect climate change. A climate skeptic, she has said that CO2 is not a pollutant.

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 9, No. 46. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.